{"id":1819,"date":"2012-10-20T19:50:29","date_gmt":"2012-10-20T19:50:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/ideafund\/?p=1819"},"modified":"2015-05-14T18:19:44","modified_gmt":"2015-05-14T22:19:44","slug":"strategic-and-tactical-planning-retreat-solidifying-our-structure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/ideafund\/2012\/10\/20\/strategic-and-tactical-planning-retreat-solidifying-our-structure\/","title":{"rendered":"Exec. Board Strategic and Tactical Planning Retreat"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Semester update and retreat overview from Executive Director G Tiarachristie<\/strong><\/h2>\n

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Markers, flip-charts, post-it notes, blown-up charts, fun-shaped stress-balls, jittery hands, and limbs stretching against furniture\u2026\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/h3>\n

On Saturday, September 15, the office looked like an intensively epic brainstorming scene from the Great Debators (with a several more cups of coffee and post-it tabs… and not enough Denzel Washington). The IF board spent nine hours in the 169 W High Street office space at a Strategic and Tactical Planning Retreat.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

This past month, the Idea Fund board has been busy establishing core processes, new protocols, and other succession and organizational documents to ensure its health, viability, and effectiveness as a project resource-center for students.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Continuing our Strength-Weakness-Opportunities-Challanges analysis and strategic planning from this summer, seniors J.J. Luceno and G Tiarachristie worked closely to bring Mr. Bob Boehringer, Vice President in Process Management for the\u00a0<\/span>Orion Development Group<\/em><\/span><\/a>, to campus and to facilitate tactical planning, process mapping, and team-based problem solving with the Idea Fund.\u00a0<\/span>
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\"\"Mr. Boehringer has been the architect of Orion\u2019s seminar, has helped clients such as Citibank, Microsoft, and Pfitzer, and has worked in the past for Proctor and Gamble and Pepsi-Cola.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n

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Our goals were to build more teamwork, solidify certain processes, and prepare the foundations for more effective succession planning.<\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n
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Starting 8:00am that Saturday, Mr. Boehringer generously gave his time and teaching skills in an interactive 9-hour crash course on Enterprise Mapping with the IF Board. A professor at heart, he guided us through new frameworks of thinking and visual organizational possibilities\u2014keeping the organized personalities in the room at the edge of their seats.<\/span><\/div>\n
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By 5pm, we had created very comprehensive documents, solidifying the Project Consulting Process, addressing the issues that have arisen in the past, and applying lessons learned into new protocols to ensure inclusion of stakeholders, effective communication, clarity of tasks, structure and organization, and student ownership of their project.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\"\"We also created the beginnings of other guiding documents, such as responsibility and cross-functional charts, and identified the next steps to develop the organizational components of the Fund. We were introduced to the idea of a \u201cParking-Lot\u201d\u2014a board for post-it notes of issues, problems, or ideas that we spontaneously think of to address later, without interrupting the current topic\/flow of focused group discussions.<\/span><\/div>\n
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With the guidance of Mr. Boehringer, the board members not only learned new analytical skills about process, steps, and issues applicable to almost anything organizational, but also more about individual strengths and working styles as team leaders.<\/span><\/div>\n
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This planning retreat marks an important stage in the growth of the Idea Fund: building a solid, yet flexible, structure to the foundation of its management, organization, and succession.<\/strong> <\/span><\/div>\n
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With the student-developed and crowd-sourced protocols, maps, and documents that the Idea Fund recently established, we are taking lead and setting a structural example for student-run green revolving loan funds and for-student-by-student project incubators across the nation. Furthermore, we have learned valuable critical thinking, problem solving, program management, and self-development skills for life, along the way.<\/span><\/div>\n
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If you’re interested in more photos of this event check out the album – Executive Board Retreat\u00a0<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
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Because all documents are still in executive committee review stage, they are not yet available on the website. <\/span><\/em><\/div>\n
For a preview of these documents and charts, contact tiarachg @ dickinson.edu.<\/span><\/em><\/div>\n
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MID-SEMESTER UPDATES<\/strong>
\n(What we’ve done and are doing)<\/em><\/h3>\n